Douglas Adams It's safe to say that The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is one of the funniest science fiction novels ever written. Adams spoofs many core science fiction tropes: space travel, aliens, interstellar war—stripping away all sense of wonder and repainting them as commonplace, even silly.

This omnibus edition begins with The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in which Arthur Dent is introduced to the galaxy at large when he is rescued by an alien friend seconds before Earth's destruction. Then in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Arthur and his new friends travel to the end of time and discover the true reason for Earth's existence. In Life, the Universe, and Everything, the gang goes on a mission to save the entire universe. So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish recounts how Arthur finds true love and "God's Final Message to His Creation." Finally, Mostly Harmless is the story of Arthur's continuing search for home, in which he instead encounters his estranged daughter, who is on her own quest. There's also a bonus short story, "Young Zaphod Plays It Safe," more of a vignette than a full story, which wraps up this completist's package of the Don't Panic chronicles. As the series progresses, its wackier elements diminish, but the satire of human life and foibles is ever present. —Brooks Peck

Arc, Red Cross American

Stephen Colbert Congratulations—just by looking at this webpage, you became 25% more patriotic.

From Stephen Colbert, the host of television's highest-rated punditry show The Colbert Report, comes the book to fill the other 23¿ hours of your day. I Am America (And So Can You!) contains all of the opinions that Stephen doesn't have time to shoehorn into his nightly broadcast.

Dictated directly into a microcassette recorder over a three-day weekend, this book contains Stephen's most deeply held knee-jerk beliefs on The American Family, Race, Religion, Sex, Sports, and many more topics, conveniently arranged in chapter form.

Always controversial and outspoken, Stephen addresses why Hollywood is destroying America by inches, why evolution is a fraud, and why the elderly should be harnessed to millstones.

You may not agree with everything Stephen says, but at the very least, you'll understand that your differing opinion is wrong.

I Am America (And So Can You!) showcases Stephen Colbert at his most eloquent and impassioned. He is an unrelenting fighter for the soul of America, and in this book he fights the good fight for the traditional values that have served this country so well for so long.

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Gloria K. Fiero LANDMARKS in Humanities is a single-volume survey of global culture designed for students of humanities, cultural history, and history of the arts. In chronological sequence, LANDMARKS highlights the most notable monuments of the human imagination—those works of art and architecture, literature, philosophy, and music that have been foremost in shaping the world's cultures.

The text's fifteen chapters are unified by core concepts related to each period, such as Classicism, Christendom, or Modernism. Chapter features include "Ideas and Issues" boxes containing primary-source excerpts; "Parallels" sidebars relating images and ideas; "Beyond the West" sections highlighting influential landmarks of Asian, African, and Oceanic cultures; and chapter-ending timelines keying landmarks in humanities to major historical events. Throughout the text, high quality maps place key events and works in a clear geographical context. In addition, an outstanding supplements package accompanies the text, featuring resources for both students and instructors. Each copy of LANDMARKS will include a free student DVD-ROM, Core Concepts in Humanities, which contains interactive activities for each chapter in the text plus numerous other study resources for all humanities disciplines.

H. Ramsey Fowler, Jane E. Aaron The most trusted and authoritative name in handbooks, The Little, Brown Compact Handbook with Exercises is an easy-to-use reference that will answer any question you may have in grammar, writing, or research. It also includes exercises so you can practice skills. This edition offers the latest information on writing with computers, writing online, analyzing visuals, and researching effectively on the Internet. With clear explanations, a wealth of examples, and quick reference checklists and boxes, The Little, Brown Compact Handbook will makes it easy to find what you need and use the information you find.

Will answer any question a writer has about grammar, the writing process, or research.

The writing process, critical thinking, argumentative writing, style, grammar, mechanics, usage, the research process, how to document sources. Anyone who wants a reliable writing reference book.

John Hodgman With his Daily Show appearances and his "I'm a PC" Apple ads, John Hodgman has only become more famous since the hardcover edition of his all-you-need compendium of facts, The Areas of My Expertise was released. He has also become smarter. To reflect this, the paperback edition of The Areas of My Expertise has been expanded to include 100 new hobo names and new, additional complete world knowledge. John Hodgman and his fur-hatted associate, Jonathan, have prepared an exclusive video for Amazon customers explaining the above.

Click here or on the image above to watch John Hodgman describe the only book you'll ever need.

Bathroom Readers' Institute Uncle John’s Gigantic Bathroom Reader features the latest and greatest hits from the Bathroom Readers’ Institute. A giant-sized helping of Uncle John’s amazing anecdotes, strange stories, and brain-busters is divided into convenient lengths — quickies, regular-length and long items for those extended stays. Tipping the scales at more than 500 pages, this massive missive is packed with fun facts, tantalizing tid-bits and perplexing puzzles. Consider these rather smelly facts: Did you know women have a keener sense of smell than men and that odor molecules enter your nasal cavity 23,000 times a day? Phew! Make sure you’re up on the latest, greatest underwear innovations like the Alarm Bra and sweat-laced underpants from Japan (don’t ask — read!). Don’t go to your throne alone — take Uncle John with you!

Regina Leeds Do you own your stuff—or does it own you?

Whether someone lives in a mansion or a studio, drives an SUV or a MiniCooper—stuff often builds up into an endless stream of clutter, taking over living spaces and complicating lives. Drawing on nearly two decades of experience organizing living and work spaces, renowned organizing expert Regina Leeds has the solution for conquering clutter in every room of one’s house, along with in one’s office, car, and garage.

—Short, easy-to-use format
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Alan Moore Has any comic been as acclaimed as Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen? Possibly only Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, but Watchmen remains the critics' favorite. Why? Because Moore is a better writer, and Watchmen a more complex and dark and literate creation than Miller's fantastic, subversive take on the Batman myth. Moore, renowned for many other of the genre's finest creations (Saga of the Swamp Thing, V for Vendetta, and From Hell, with Eddie Campbell) first put out Watchmen in 12 issues for DC in 1986-87. It won a comic award at the time (the 1987 Jack Kirby Comics Industry Awards for Best Writer/Artist combination) and has continued to gather praise since.

The story concerns a group called the Crimebusters and a plot to kill and discredit them. Moore's characterization is as sophisticated as any novel's. Importantly the costumes do not get in the way of the storytelling; rather they allow Moore to investigate issues of power and control—indeed it was Watchmen, and to a lesser extent Dark Knight, that propelled the comic genre forward, making "adult" comics a reality. The artwork of Gibbons (best known for 2000AD's Rogue Trooper and DC's Green Lantern) is very fine too, echoing Moore's paranoid mood perfectly throughout. Packed with symbolism, some of the overlying themes (arms control, nuclear threat, vigilantes) have dated but the intelligent social and political commentary, the structure of the story itself, its intertextuality (chapters appended with excerpts from other "works" and "studies" on Moore's characters, or with excerpts from another comic book being read by a child within the story), the finepace of the writing and its humanity mean that Watchmen more than stands up—it keeps its crown as the best the genre has yet produced. —Mark Thwaite

A Q&A with Dave Gibbons on the Making of Watchmen

Question: You were tasked with drawing new illustrations of key shots from the new Watchmen film. Was it a difficult challenge to re-imagine your work in this movie format?

Dave Gibbons: I don’t think that I actually did many key shots from the film. I had to actually imagine them rather than exactly recreate what was going to be in the movie. But as far as the drawings I did for the licensing purposes, accuracy was the real key so that they looked exactly like the movie. Whereas doing the graphic novel was creating stuff afresh and being very creative, this was more the case of interpreting something that already existed. So it was rather more a commercial art job than a creative thing.

Q: How many scenes from the original graphic novel did you redraw in the new "movie" format?

DG: I kind of did them piecemeal, these licensing drawings. I did do a section of storyboarding for Zack Snyder. There is a part of the movie that isn’t in the graphic novel and he wanted to see how I would have drawn it, if it had been in the graphic novel. So I redid the storyboards as three pages of comic on the nine-panel grid, also getting it coloured by John Higgins so it looked authentic. But I think there were probably only 3 or 4 scenes that I drew, which were from the movie.

Q: What was your working method for producing these new illustrations from the film? And how has it changed from when you originally illustrated Watchmen?

DG: When you’re producing things from existing material, you have to look at and assemble the references... you know, keep looking backwards and forwards to make sure what you’re drawing is accurate to what’s in the photos. I did have lots of photos from the movie and in some cases I had more or less the illustration I was going to do in photo form, which made it a lot easier. On others I had to construct it from various references: really just the usual illustrator’s job of drawing something to reference. And on the original illustrations of Watchmen, I was free to come up with exactly the angles and exactly the costumes and everything that I wanted to. When you’ve designed a costume and drawn it a few times, you actually internalize it and you find you can draw it without having to refer to reference at all. So in some ways it’s more creative and in some ways it’s easier!

Q: In Watchmen: The Art of the Film, there are concept designs by other artists of their visions of your iconic characters. What do you think of their versions and did you offer any guidance while they were working on these?

DG: It’s always really interesting to see versions of your characters drawn by other artists. You tend to see things in them that you hadn’t noticed before. So I really enjoyed looking at those. I certainly didn’t offer them any guidance. The purpose of getting those kinds of drawings done is to get a fresh perspective on what exists. I noticed actually that they really stuck more closely to my original designs than those, but I really enjoyed seeing them.

Q: Watchmen: Portraits is Clay Enos’s stunning black and white collection of photos of each character from the Watchmen movie. What was it like looking through this book at all the characters you had conceived years ago now being brought to life by actors?

DG: It’s rather interesting; you know if you look at the Watching the Watchmen book you can see these characters as fairly sketchy rough conceptual versions. Then when you look at Clay’s book you can actually see them right down to counting the number of pores on the skin on the end of their noses! It’s incredible high focus! It’s like zooming in through space and time to look at the surface of some moon of Saturn or something. I thoroughly enjoyed his book... it had a real artistic quality to it that was really so good. And of course to see these actors who so much are the embodiment of what I drew, that it’s a tremendous thrill to see them made flesh!

Q: Watchmen: The Film Companion features some stills from the animated version of The Black Freighter. What do you think of the look and design of this animated feature?

DG: It looks really interesting! Although I drew my version in the comic book in a kind of horror-comic style, these are very much in a savage manga style. I think they work really well... they’ve got the kind of manic intensity, which I think that work should have and I really can’t wait to see the whole feature. I’ve seen the trailer for it and that looks great and again they’ve used a lot of the compositions that I came up with but just translated them to this kind of very modern drawn animation.

Q: How much time did you spend on the set of Watchmen? Was it a surreal experience to see your work recreated like this?

DG: I was on the set of Watchmen for a couple of days and it really was surreal to walk through a door and then suddenly be in the presence of all these people in living breathing flesh! I was there for what you would call the Crimebusters meeting where they were all there in costume in the same room, which was incredible. They had obviously planned that so I would get to see everyone. It was surreal though quite a wonderful experience to see it come to life.